Sunday, January 10, 2010

NCAA Tournament Droughts

Yesterday, in the NFL Playoffs, one long drought ended and another one continued. The Dallas Cowboys won their first playoff game since 1996. They were one of 6 teams that had not won a playoff game since the 1990's. The team that has gone the longest without a playoff win is the Cincinnati Bengals who last won a playoff game January 6, 1991 against the Houston Oilers. (For those that are too young to remember, that is the team that the Tennessee Titans used to be.)

This is a blog about the NCAA Tournament, not the NFL, but I started thinking about the playoff droughts and wondered who had the longest droughts in the NCAA Tournament. First I started with longest drought since last win. Unlike the NFL, where almost every team has won a playoff game (except the Houston Texans), only about half the teams have won NCAA Tournament games. Therefore, to qualify for longest drought, the team actually had to win a game first. Winless teams obviously have had longer droughts (infinite), but I am looking at time since last win.

The 5 teams that have the longest droughts are:

Baylor - defeated Brigham Young 56-55 on 3/23/1950 in the Elite Eight

CCNY - defeated Bradley 71-68 on 3/28/1950 in the National Championship

Lebanon Valley - defeated Fordham 80-67 on 3/10/1953 in the First Round (Round of 32)

Rice - defeated Colorado 78-55 on 3/13/1954 in the Regional Third Place game

Out of those teams, only Baylor is in a "BCS" conference and has the best chance of ending their drought. CCNY and Lebanon Valley are no longer Division I schools. Some other notable schools that have long droughts include:

South Carolina - last win in 1973

Oregon State - last win in 1982

Rutgers - last win in 1983

Houston - last win in 1984 (in the Final Four - lost to Georgetown in the Championship)

Massachusetts - last win in 1996 (in the Elite Eight - lost to Kentucky in the Final Four)

Minnesota - last win in 1997 (in the Elite Eight - lost to Kentucky in the Final Four)

Not winning an NFL playoff game usually means that you did not make it to the final 8 in playoffs. So I decided to also see who has the longest drought since their last Elite Eight appearance. The 5 schools that have gone the longest since their last Elite Eight appearance are:

Brown - 1939

Springfield - 1940

Creighton - 1941

Washington State -1941

Rice - 1942

Washington State is the only BCS school in the list. Other notable schools include:

Baylor - 1950

Washington - 1953

California - 1960

Arizona State - 1975

DePaul - 1979

Notre Dame - 1979

Clemson - 1980

North Carolina State - 1986

Iowa - 1987

Kansas State - 1988

Washington has been to the Sweet Sixteen four times since 1953, but the two most notable games are when they were defeated by Connecticut on a last second shot by Richard Hamilton in 1998 and lost in overtime to Connecticut in 2006 when Rashad Anderson hit a game-tying three-pointer for UConn to send it into overtime.